Veggies? Just Roll with It

Here's your nightly math! Just 5 quick minutes of number fun for kids and parents at home. Read a cool fun fact, followed by math riddles at different levels so everyone can jump in. Your kids will love you for it.

Veggies? Just Roll with It

Not everyone loves the Brussels sprout. This vegetable is small, round, green, and kind of bitter-tasting. Even so, one brave man chose it for a very muddy stunt. Stuart Kettell rolled a Brussels sprout all the way up Mount Snowdon, the tallest mountain in Wales, by pushing it with his nose. It took him 4 days to roll it 3,560 feet, while wearing clunky kneepads, gloves, and of course a face protector. All the money given by the people cheering him on went towards research on how to cure cancer. Even if Stuart doesn’t like Brussels sprouts, we hope he ate SOME kind of veggie before climbing that mountain!

Wee ones: A Brussels sprout is round like a ball (“sphere”). Try to find 2 spheres or balls in your room.

Little kids: If Stuart started pushing that Brussels sprout on a Tuesday and it took 4 days total including Tuesday, on what weekday did he finish? Bonus: If Stuart rolled the sprout 3,560 feet and then rolled it 1 more foot to the side, how many feet did it roll in total? See if you can remember the number well enough to add 1!

Big kids: If a whole crowd of 18 people rolled veggies, and twice as many rolled corn on the cob as those rolling Brussels sprouts, how many rolled each veggie? Bonus: What if 120 people rolled veggies, again with twice as many corn rollers as sprout rollers…how many rolled each one?

Answers:Wee ones: Items might include balls for play (soccer ball, beach ball, etc.), a ball of Playdough, or a marble.

Little kids: On a Friday. Bonus: 3,561 feet.

Big kids: 12 rolled corn, 6 rolled sprouts. If double the number rolled corn, that’s like having a set of sprout rollers plus 2 more sets of sprout rollers, or 3 sets. So the sprout rollers are 1/3 the total. Bonus: 80 corn rollers, 40 sprout rollers.

About the Author

Laura Bilodeau Overdeck is founder and president of Bedtime Math Foundation. Her goal is to make math as playful for kids as it was for her when she was a child. Her mom had Laura baking while still in diapers, and her dad had her using power tools at a very unsafe age, measuring lengths, widths and angles in the process. Armed with this early love of numbers, Laura went on to get a BA in astrophysics from Princeton University, and an MBA from the Wharton School of Business; she continues to star-gaze today. Laura’s other interests include her three lively children, chocolate, extreme vehicles, and Lego Mindstorms.